


Swallowed a Bad Thing

by especiallythezefronposter



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (but no major character death they're all okay), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bruce Banner is Not an Avenger, Bruce only makes an appearance later on but there's a lot of fluff to make up for it i swear, Dark, Depression, Friendship, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hugs, Human Experimentation, Hurt Tony Stark, Intimacy, Loneliness, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Peter Parker is an Avenger, Self-Harm, Suicide, Tony Angst, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony-centric, sort of, this is so angsty seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 22:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4979425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/especiallythezefronposter/pseuds/especiallythezefronposter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'A huge lab rat just killed itself because Tony told it to,' Peter says helpfully. Tony flips up his faceplate to say something witty in return, but realizes too late that the terror is written all over his face and he can't come up with anything to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swallowed a Bad Thing

**Author's Note:**

> So, if you didn't see it in the tags, Bruce is still Hulk, but he isn't on the Avengers. Spider-Man is the one filling up the sixth spot.

The first time it happens, Tony is just kidding. 

'You are one ugly motherfucker,' he tells the monster of the day, something that used to be a rat at some point, but is now the size of a truck, eyes bulging out of its skull and a tail strong enough to knock Tony out of the air. The thing is chewing at a car, digging it open with its claws, revealing, to Tony's relief, empty seats. Through its sparse fur and the pink, bald spots in between oozes a brown substance that Tony can't smell thanks to the filtration system in the suit, but that, according to Clint _reeks_.

The rat stops chewing and bows its head in a motion resembling shame when it hears Tony. 'Oh so you know, huh?' He should have stopped there, it's pathetic to say these kinds of things, even to a beast, but he doesn't stop, because he's had a bad day and a bad week and a bad month and asking hard questions is easier if you aren't asking them to yourself. 'So why don't you end it? You're useless and you're destructive and you're ugly.' Then, because that doesn't give the satisfaction he was hoping for, he adds, 'End it.'

The rat does as it is told. It claws loose the roof of the car and pushes the sharp ridge into its own side. It squeals in pain, then stumbles to the ground and twitches before going limp.

Tony feels bile rise in his throat, hears the blood rushing in his ears and sees black spots appearing in front of his eyes. JARVIS is saying something, but Tony can't concentrate. 'We won,' he says, talking into the comms, his own voice a distant, meaningless thing. His metal-clad feet hit the ground with a sharp noise and he stumbles, then stands straight and waves Steve away when he comes rushing towards him. 'Anyone up for an early dinner at the Lebanese place on Seventeenth?', he asks. 

He is greeted only by silence, which freaks him out because that's not how this should go. They should cheer and they should follow him to some restaurant and they should all eat in their suits, because even if he's the only one who admits it, they all love how everyone does a double take when they see them.

They shouldn't be silently staring at him, Thor and Clint from some high place and Natasha from where she's come to stand beside Steve and Peter from where he's swinging in between the buildings to eventually land at Steve's other side, pulling down his hood. Tony shouldn't be aware of the dead thing behind him, shouldn't feel like he knew what it was feeling in that very last moment. Confusion, not even fear, just that numb, empty not-understanding.

Steve only moves when Tony stumbles again. He walks towards him from where he stopped a few meters away, hands out like he's ready to catch him should he fall. 'What the hell was that?', he asks. He doesn't sound angry, only worried and a little surprised. His cowl is down, hair messy and eyes big and blue and sincere. Tony chooses to focus on Natasha instead, who is walking back to the place where Thor is about to land, holding Clint close. She says something to them when their feet hit the ground and they nod and look earnestly towards him.

'A huge lab rat just killed itself because Tony told it to,' Peter says helpfully and Tony flips up his faceplate to say something witty in return, realizes too late that the terror is written all over his face and he can't come up with anything to say. 

Peter doesn't look away, but Tony can tell he wants to. 'Maybe we can postpone victory dinner for another day, okay? I think we better get back home.'

Steve nods, eyes drifting to Stark Tower, the top of which must be visible behind Tony somewhere. 'Yeah. Thor and I can cook tonight. Debriefs can wait, too. We're having a movie night.' He looks back at Tony and Tony hates him for how calm he is. 'You get to pick.'

Tony doesn't know what to say to that, so he says nothing and flips his faceplate back down. He knows Steve wants them to fly back together to Stark Tower, all of them in the Quinjet like they're having a team-moment, but he doesn't complain when Tony takes off on his own. He should remember this for later. Traumatic experiences make Rogers go soft. He didn't even tell him not to pick the terrible Captain America movie with a young Mel Gibson playing Steve.

Not that he's going to pick that movie. Or that what he experienced was traumatic. Killing monsters is literally his job. He doesn’t even care enough to keep track of how many times he delivered the final blow. He was about to do it now, too, so that he got the rat to do it to itself was practical rather than absolutely scary.

Still, by the time he lands at the penthouse, he can't get his breathing right and he's trembling when the suit disassembles around him. The Quinjet usually takes three minutes longer than he does on his own, so he spends those in the bathroom, splashing cold water in his face.

He's standing in front of the mirror, checking if anyone would be able to tell that he almost had a panic attack, when a stabbing sensation in his side takes him by surprise. The noise he makes is soft and high and pained and when he pulls up his shirt, he makes another one just like it. Across his right hip, a long, wide scar has appeared, the skin around it pulled taut and still churning, like the thing hasn't fully settled into his skin yet.

It's more or less where the rat stabbed itself, is the first connection he makes. Then he drops his shirt and decides not to think of the rat again. The scar can't have anything to do with it anyway. He got stabbed a lot when the gala he attended with Pepper in Sarajevo went south. He must've just missed this one. Not noticing stabbing wounds is more plausible than most things in his life these days, especially than having a scar where he told a rat to stab itself.

By the time the team is back, he's out of his flying suit and wearing sweats and his favourite T-shirt. He grins at them as genuinely as he can as he tells them that they'll be watching Wall-E tonight. It's one of his favourite movies, though he's only ever watched it on his own or with Pepper before. It's the one they watch when they both can't sleep because of nightmares and this is crossing a line somehow, a new level of intimacy between him and these people he'd die for. It's because he trusts them, he convinces himself, not because he feels like he's having a nightmare.

-

Steve somehow manages to keep Tony from having to do a debrief for five full days, but that doesn't mean it isn't awful when it finally happens. Fury, according to Coulson, doesn't have time for a simple mission debrief, but when Tony explains exactly what happened, recounting the facts without his usual bullshit, Coulson mutters two words into his telephone, and ten minutes later, Tony and Coulson step into a Quinjet, Hill behind the helm and Fury sitting in one of the seats, already strapped in.

'I hope you don't have plans for the rest of the day, Stark,' he says. ''cause we're taking a trip.'

'Where to?', he asks, glancing up from his phone only briefly. He's wearing sunglasses, hasn't done that indoors since the Avengers moved in, because he's starting to get used to people actually seeing him. Doing it now feels like taking a step in the wrong direction, all the way back to when he’d pick sunglasses over Kevlar if he wanted to feel safe.

'That's classified,' Coulson says behind him in that awful smug tone and Hill is saying things about how long it's going to take and how good the weather conditions are today.

Tony ignores them for the rest of the flight, playing games on his phone until he gets tired of it and starts to _answer e-mails_. When that gets boring - as if it wasn't already, he reviews the analysis of the rat's slime Peter sent him and texts him that it's great and he doesn't have to worry if he doesn't see Tony in the lab all day. He adds that he's making a secret trip with the secret super-spy club, but then erases it and says he's solving a problem at a Stark Industries facility in Nebraska instead, that it might take a couple of hours and that if Pete needs anything, he should ask JARVIS or go bother someone else on the team.

He hates long flights and by the time the plane finally lands, he's bouncing his leg and tapping a ring around his finger rhythmlessly against the side of his phone. 'So this is the Fridge,' he says as they step out of the plane, still fiddling with his phone. Hacking into the Quinjet's navigation system had only taken seconds. 'What exactly am I doing here?'

'You'll see,' Fury says and leads the way into one of the dark hallways giving out on the hangar they landed in. Hill doesn’t go with them, but walks of in another direction without so much as acknowledging Tony. The hallway goes down and down and they have to pass three thick, guarded doors before they reach what Tony assumes in their destination.

It's another thick door, this one obviously air-locked and reinforced, probably made out of the strongest material SHIELD could afford. Beside it is a normal wooden door that looks fragile in comparison. They enter this door and on the other side is a dark control room, a screen showing footage of what Tony assumes is behind the other door. A bigger room than he expected with a bigger prisoner than he expected. Something not at all human, with muddy green skin, bulging muscles and menacing spikes along its back. The thing is staring at the wall and scratching at its own ankle, which is not much more than an open wound.

'So why exactly am I here? If you guys want to have a kinky threesome with me you could've just asked, though the answer is no. I'm sort of -'

'We want you to kill him,' Fury says.

'Four years ago an army scientist attempted to recreate the Super Soldier serum using gamma radiation. He tested it on himself and turned into a monster similar to this one. To fight him the army believed they needed another monster. Captain Emil Blonsky was given the same serum and ended up like this. Him and the other monster destroyed half of Harlem. The other one escaped and Blonsky here was captured by us,' Coulson says, glancing at the file in his hands. 'Any effort to tame him or kill him has been unsuccessful, but, due to recent events, we think you might be able to help us out.'

Tony is shaking his head, eyes on the screen. 'I'm not going in there.'

'You don't have to. There's a mic right here and speakers in the ceiling. All you have to do is give him the order,' Coulson says.

Tony feels sick, his voice coming out like bile. 'What is he going to kill himself with?'

Coulson smiles at him reassuringly and Tony wants to punch him. 'If our theory is sound, he'll find away.'

'What if I refuse?'

'Then we'll fly you back to New York as soon as Hill is done with her interrogation. I recommend you to consider our proposal first, though. There's a file that can explain all this. We have it in our possession, but, should you decide to help us, we'd gladly give it to you.'

'The longest it ever took me to hack into your files was five hours, and that's because Parker and I were playing a game in which I had to get into your system and he had to defend it. I could just do that and let this guy live.'

'This file only exists on paper. Your father never put it in a computer and we believe that was a good call.'

His father made the file. His father knew about this and there's a whole file about it and he has to kill a man to get to it.

'What exactly is in this file? How long is it?'

'Experiments, or... enhancements, rather, performed on you. They're described in much detail, hour by hour.'

'By my old man?'

'Yes.'

He stands there for a moment, staring at the footage of the madman at the other side of the wall. 'What if I can't do it? What if it was just a coincidence, that the rat was trained to follow orders and it didn't have anything to do with me?'

Fury is leaning against the far wall of the control room, watching him closely. 'Then we'll thank you for trying and give you the file anyway, if you still think it's relevant.'

He looks at Fury, then back at Blonsky. 'Where is the mic?', he asks, voice unsteady.

Coulson points him towards it, the smugness gone for now.

He taps the mic and can hear it echoing on the monitor, but the monster doesn't look up. 'Blonsky,' It feels significant to call this man by his name before he kills him, though he's still hoping it won't work. The thing in the cell stirs, interested. Behind him, Coulson tells Fury that Blonsky hasn't been responsive to human voices for quite a while. Tony takes a deep, shuddering breath, so that his voice will be steady as he speaks his next words. 'Kill yourself.'

To his horror, the monster does. It stands immediately, looks at the wall for a moment and then bangs its head against the thick metal edge of the doorpost, does it again and again until he can't anymore. He lies there, skull broken and waits for death to come with his eyes on the ceiling, until he eventually goes limp. Tony can't look away from the mess on the screen - the blood splattered walls and the mangled face of the once-man named Blonsky - even when Coulson startles him by putting a hand on his shoulder. 'The file,' Tony says, though the words mean nothing to him, it's just something he's supposed to say. 

Coulson hasn't pulled back his hand and it makes Tony's skin tingle in an unpleasant way. 'Turn around, Tony,' he says gently and Tony waits ten more seconds before he does as Coulson says. Only then he stops trying to force his breathing into a steady pattern. It becomes soft, shallow, like he's not breathing at all anymore

He looks at the file instead of at Coulson's face, hopes that Coulson doesn't notice his eyes are wet. He hands him the file, which is thicker than Tony expected and is titled 'PROJECT IMPERATOR', scrawled in his dad's handwriting.

He decides not to read it on the flight back, because it can't possibly be okay and he isn't sure that he'll have enough energy to hide how he feels about it when he's feeling wrung out like this.

When they have boarded the Quinjet and Hill is taking off, pain explodes on the top of his head, hidden underneath the beginning of his hairline. When he reaches up, his fingers run over the sensitive smoothness of scar tissue and, heart hammering, he remembers Blonsky slamming his own head into the doorpost.

-

They get back to New York by eight and when Tony walks into the kitchen for a snack, Steve is there, too, hair damp from the shower he takes after his evening work out.

'Oh,' he says when he sees Tony. 'How did it go?'

Tony shrugs, clinging to the file. 'I apparently have an actual superpower that I didn't build with my own two hands,' he says and his voice is thick. He thinks he's supposed to laugh now, because it's funny, but his lips won't move that way.

'Shit, Tony,' Steve says and he is probably the only person who can make swearwords sound gentle and compassionate. 'Do you need anything?'

He shakes his head. He doesn't trust his voice anymore.

'Do you want to talk about it?'

He shakes his head again. 'Maybe later,' he says then, hoping he still has the number of the psychiatrist he had around the time his parents died. It's the only one that hasn't anonymously spilled everything Tony's told them to the press yet. 

'You look like you need a hug,' Steve says and it's not what Tony was expecting. Steve slaps his shoulder sometimes and sure, Peter gave him a brief hug before he went to visit Gwen at college last year, and Thor has given each of them a bone-crushing embrace at some point, but except for those, Tony doesn't have much physical contact with anyone on the team. There's Pepper and there's Rhodey and sometimes there's a stranger, but no one else ever gets to come that close.

The point is that he isn't comfortable with being touched, trusts the team enough to fight by their side and watch Wall-E with them, but not to be close to him physically, because physical closeness turns into something sexual so easily and he is known for ruining sexual things.

He hesitates, then nods and lets Steve wrap him into a gentle, warm hug. His elevated body temperature makes Tony shiver and he realizes that his own skin is freezing. Steve's hug is loose enough that Tony could escape if he wanted to, but tight enough to still be comforting. He wraps one arm around Steve's waist to pull him closer and presses his forehead against Steve's shoulder.

'You knew my dad,' Tony mutters after a while.

'Yes.' Steve sounds hesitant.

'Do you think he could have been a monster?'

Steve is quiet for a long time before he answers. 'When I met him he was so young. He made weapons because he loved engineering, not because he wanted to hurt people. He was funny and kind and protective, but there's a lot that happened after I crashed the plane. Everybody changes, especially in war, and maybe he didn't change for the better. I didn't know him long enough to judge about that. What do you think?'

He's still clutching the file awkwardly, arm trapped between their bodies. 'I don't know,' he lies.

Steve doesn't ask any questions and holds Tony until Tony lets go. 

-

He doesn't read the file that night. Or the next day. Or the day after that. Instead he works on projects in his private workshop, the one only he can enter, and Pete, maybe, if he asks permission first. He gets one two-hour nap in total and stops to eat twice. Coffee breaks are more frequent and it was worth ignoring safety protocols and putting a coffee machine right in the middle of the lab, because he doesn't think he could handle walking into any of the others while he's going for a refill in the common kitchen, not when all he can think of is that ugly dying rat and Blonky's mangled face.

He works until he's dizzy from exhaustion and then some, feeling clean somehow, his body as empty as he can get it. JARVIS tries to talk to him sometimes, but he can't make out the words, catches them, lets them slip from his mind before they can mean something. The file lies in the centre of the room, on a table he cleared especially for the purpose of displaying the stupid thing. He had tried putting it away at first, in drawers and cupboards and other rooms, but he kept staring at it wherever it was, so he figured that it would be easier if it just laid there in plain sight.

It wasn't, only made him feel more dread, knowing that he'd read it at some point, that he'd know and that he'd have to live with it. He doesn't want to know. Whatever it is, it can only be bad.

He flinches when the lift doors in the back of the room slide open to reveal Peter, who walks in uncomfortably, has never been here before. JARVIS must have let him in. Tony would call him a traitor for it, but remembers installing the protocols himself, in case he didn't take care of himself, someone of the right clearance level should be enabled to find him, help him. Funny how the only person who has as much clearance as Pep and Rhodey is a scrawny seventeen year old whom he only ever met because he got bitten by a spider.

Pete walks over to him slowly, fidgeting, waiting for Tony to lash out at him. Tony doesn't, sinks down onto the couch instead. He doesn't bother pulling up his guard, lets the terror into his eyes and hopes it won't scare Peter away.

'Pete,' he says hoarsely. He doesn't know what he wants to say to him, has lost his train of thought if he ever did. 

Peter sits down beside him, shoulders and knees brushing. 'I know,' he whispers. 'It's alright. We'll help. We've got you.' He keeps muttering these things, about the team and safety and help. At some point Peter takes his hand and starts to trace his knuckles, his veins, the lines in his palm. He draws shapes and varies pressure until Tony is feeling calm, almost sleepy.

Tony only realizes he's been crying when it's over. He's ashamed when he feels the sticky tears on his cheeks, the way his throat aches from the sobs. He's leaning into Pete a little and sits up as soon as he notices, though he doesn't pull his hand away.

It's Peter who lets go eventually, gentle and with a decisive sort of finality. He doesn't look at Tony, but reaches for his hand again and plays with his fingers. 'You are going to drink the soup I prepared for you. Then you're going to sleep for at least eight hours, then Steve is going to make you breakfast and you are going to take a shower. Afterwards you're going to read the file, or I will.' He says all of this in a soft murmur, still expecting Tony to send him away.

'Okay,' Tony says, and he breathes in carefully.

-

This is what the file says:

Howard Stark wanted his son to rule the world, wanted him to not only have an empire at his feet, but everything, everyone, a key to every door. He wanted for him to command not only his staff, but entire armies, to decide every war that would ever be fought from then on, to lead countries to battle and lead them back out without anyone second-guessing him. He wanted him to be like Captain America, but without flaws, without the kind-heartedness, the will for peace (which was, in Howard's words, unsustainable and, if existing for too long, bad for the economy) that the serum hadn't been able to take out of him.

Tony Stark was going to be flawless and there was only one thing he needed to become this. Something Howard wanted to give him.

According to the file, the experiments start when Tony is four, almost five, though he remembers none of this. His father starts with his vocal chords, tries to rewire them, then Tony's brain. He only keeps this up for the better half of a year, before concluding that whatever Howard is looking for, Tony doesn't have it in him, so Howard tries to find it in an external source: the Tesseract.

Tony has to stop reading the next entries mid-sentence more than once. He retches above a toilet bowl or stares at a bottle of Scotch until he has convinced himself that this is something he needs to be sober for. That reading about his father's crimes with a glass at his lips would be reading about who he is to become if he keeps going the way he does. He can't drink ever again. Can't have children, either, just to be sure.

Once, after an especially detailed paragraph, he goes to Peter's floor and finds him on the couch, checking his Twitter feed on his phone. 'Cap's trending for the seventh time this month. Spider-Man never trends,' he says before he sees Tony's face. Then he puts away his phone and tells JARVIS to play Wall-E on the TV. When Tony sits down, Peter puts an arm around his neck, pulling him closer.

Another time, he spars with Natasha until the arc reactor feels like it's trying to burn right out of his chest. She doesn't ask questions, but goes just hard enough that he knows she's trying to soothe him.

What it comes down to in the end is that his father spent two years, when Tony was five, six and seven, trying to turn Tony into someone who can make people do what he says just by speaking, a god on earth, and that he described these days of experimentation - the dates changed sporadically, five in a row and then nothing for two weeks, one more and then only two days of rest before another four of experiments - with cold, clinical detail, the way he'd describe the process of designing a new weapon that turned out to be very disappointing. Tony doesn't remember, not even the days that he, according to Howard's reports, screamed when Howard came to get him from his room, even though the staff had been taught to ignore this .

Howard doesn't succeed in those two years, neither does he in the next, when he calls in the help of doctors and professors who all owe him too much money to refuse cooperating or ever utter a word of it to the press. (Tony has met many of these men and memorizes their names now, remembers to ruin their lives when he gets the chance.)

When Tony is eight, Howard does succeed and Tony almost cuts out his own throat trying to undo his work. He does remember this. Not the experiment itself, which was to alter his vocal chords with Tesseract magic using a painful technique Howard hadn't tried before, but he remembers the turtlenecks and scarves his father gifted him to cover up the incision Tony had made in the side of his own neck in front of the bathroom mirror. He had always believed the scar had come from a desperate attempt to get attention from his father, as Howard had told him again and again.

The next entry is a transcript from security footage, a grainy picture beside it showing a young Tony looking at himself in the mirror. According to the transcript, he tells himself to forget about everything his father did to him, lies to himself and all that he - the one he doesn't remember being - can do is believe it. This story repeats itself many times through the years that his father perfects Tony's power. Twice at nine, once at twelve, another time at fourteen. At fifteen, Tony threatens Howard to make _him_ forget everything, to make him do all kinds of other humiliating things, and this is the last entry, Howard deciding that he has not only succeeded in giving his son a new kind of power, but also that his son is capable of wielding that power, using it to benefit himself. When Tony tells himself again to forget about everything having to do with his persuasive voice, Howard lets it be.

This is when Tony takes the file to the safe hidden in the gym, behind a wall reinforced to hold even as Thor slams against it. This is where he keeps the things that matter, the things that scare him, the things he doesn't want to think about. Pictures of his parents. The personal affects that were on them during the car crash, still in the box in which they had been handed to him at the morgue. There's a picture of him with Peggy Carter, his aunt. It's the only picture he has of the two of them together, the only proof that she was more than an imaginary hero he had invented to counter his father's coldness. There's drawings and models he made when he was still a child, gifts from his mother, a flash drive documenting every lie Obediah Stane ever told him. Vintage Captain America collectibles. Even the scale model of the '74 Stark Expo is there. The file lands with a thud underneath it and the door slams shut. It locks behind him as he walks away and that is the last time he thinks of it at all.

-

'It only works on monsters,' Tony tells Peter days later, after he's gotten himself drunk and survived the worst hangover he's had since college. He can't drink again, not ever. This has been the last time. 'On the rat and on Blonsky and on the guy and on me.'

Peter is examining the scar that appeared after Tony told a rapist to shoot himself, a tight hollow dot a little beside the arc reactor. 'You don't know that,' he says.

The new scar is more sensitive than the previous two. It hurts when Pete prods at it, stings like he's reopening it, though Tony sits perfectly still, carefully slumped back on the couch in the perfect show of relaxation. 'When I told my father to stop, it didn't work.'

Pete smooths his hand over the scar before sitting back a little, indicating that he's done. Tony puts his shirt back on. 'He's one example. That doesn't prove anything. Lots of people do what you say.' Then he gets that look in his eyes that means he either has a very good idea or a very bad one. 'Tell me to do something. I'll try to resist.'

'Take off your glasses,' Tony says, because the only other order he can come up with is 'kill yourself'.

There's a moment that everything is perfectly still. Then Peter reaches up and takes off his glasses.

Tony shakes his head. 'You're faking it,' he says.

'Make me do something else, then, something I wouldn't do otherwise.' Peter's eyes drift to his lips even though Tony can tell he's trying not to let his hopes show.

Peter wants him to tell him to kiss him. Tony isn't stupid, Peter's been wanting to kiss him for long before he even noticed, but Peter isn't the kind of person to do anything about it. Tony shouldn't be, either, not when he feels absolutely nothing for Peter and is decades older than him, but he isn't in a very responsible mood and he really wants Pete to stop looking at him like Tony's everything he can't have.

'Kiss me,' he says. He's said this before to a multitude of people and he wonders now if any of them even really wanted to kiss him, if he's even worse than the rapist because he didn't realize he was doing terrible things.

Then Peter's lips are on his, soft and warm and lingering. It's not much of a kiss, really, since Tony doesn't even kiss back, but it feels good. It's the closest he's been to anyone in a while, since before Pep left for a fucking _tour_ of conferences and meetings in Europe and Asia and South-America four weeks ago.

'Convinced?', Peter asks when he leans back, blushing even as he's trying to pretend he's still just proving a point.

'I guess,' Tony says, staring at the ceiling. 'You know I don't feel anything for you, right?'

Peter is smiling when Tony glances at him. 'Yeah. I know. Kissing you sort of felt like kissing your childhood idol, which feels sort of gross. So, um, no awkward crush here, either, I think.'

Tony allows himself to smile, too. 'Good. I was starting to think I'd have to send you back to your own lab, which would suck, because I like having you around. Your taste in music is still a problem, though.'

Peter puts a hand on his chest in mock offense. 'You knew the lyrics to Wrecking Ball before I started playing it!'

-

The music isn't that much of a problem after all, because four months and seven scars later, Tony moves out of the lab himself, retreating to the one that's only his, that even Peter can only enter if Tony authorizes it.

Peter doesn't try to talk to him about it when they walk into each other in the kitchen at night, Peter drinking milk from Tony's Hello Kitty mug and Tony stealing - it's not stealing if it's in his Tower, but it feels that way - butter knives because he needs something disposable and unbreakable to test some new equipment on. Peter doesn't try to talk about how Tony left all of his stuff in the other lab, like he's going to return one day, or about the fresh cut across Tony's shoulder or the bags under his eyes.

He doesn't say anything at all, just smiles at Tony sadly and takes another sip of his milk. 

-

Steve does say something, when Tony walks past him on his way to the shower at five in the morning. He stops Tony with a hand on his shoulder, tries to smile though it's more of a grimace. 'How are you, Tony?'

Tony could grin his trademark fucking grin and tell him he's doing peachy, getting so much done now that he's back to not sleeping and not pretending to sleep as he lies beside Pepper is her bedroom. Because Pepper fucking left and he moved out of her bedroom even though she isn't living at the Tower anymore, won't be using that bedroom ever again. He could pretend he's doing great and know that Steve’d see right through it, but at least he would back off and Tony would be rid of him without too much more words.

Instead he says, 'Like shit.' and his voice cracks and his breathing isn't quite right anymore. He can't look Steve in the eye, looks over his shoulder instead and hopes Steve will say something fast, because all Tony can do is breathe out in silence, no words on his lips.

'Look,' Steve says after a moment. 'We can put a stop to this. They don't own you. They can't make you do this. We can win our battles the old-fashioned way.'

Tony is completely focused on breathing for a moment, so it takes him a while to formulate an answer.

'There's no need for taking a shitty, dangerous road if we have a shortcut.'

'Except if the shortcut is even more shitty and dangerous.'

'Only for me. The long road endangers way more people. You're a strategist, you should know it's okay to sacrifice one if it saves thousands.'

'I did the opposite once. I risked so many people because I needed to save one man.' He seems to have lost his train of thought for a moment, stands there looking at something that only exists in his head anymore. Then he says, 'I know what sacrifice means, but I've never met a person who still had anything left willing to put their life on the line. You don't have to do this. We can make you happy, give you hope.'

Tony shakes his head, though he doesn't know what he's saying no to. 'You sacrificed yourself, putting the plane in the water.' There's an unspoken question in his voice, _weren't you happy?_ It reminds him of a little boy listening to his father's stories about Captain America, only those stories were better, all of the blood and the pain wiped off.

'I did,' he says. 'But only after that man I saved died, only after I realized that there wasn't much else left for me, anyway.'

'Oh,' is all Tony can say. Then, after a while. 'I'm still doing it, Cap. I've never really been happy before, not sober, so it'd just drive you crazy if you try now. And I... This is better than being Iron Man. Not easier, but... more honest. No one mistakes me for a hero like this.'

Steve opens his mouth to say something else, but Tony ducks past him and tries to ignore the sad look that follows him until he turns the corner.

-

He stops going to movie nights, stops appearing for coffee while the rest of the team is having breakfast, stops joining them for lunch and only goes to dinner if at least one of them isn't there, preferably Steve, who tries to carefully breach the topic of his amazing emotional state whenever he gets the chance.

He stops sparring with everyone but Thor and Natasha, who know not to ask questions or try to give him advice. It's the most interaction he still has with the team, but even those few hours at morning every other day are starting to become too much. He can't work out in beanies and long-sleeved turtlenecks, which means he has to show off way more scars than he's comfortable with. He only has ten, but there's one on his temples and one across his neck and one on either wrist and they turn white when he exerts himself and purple when he's cold.

The scar across his neck has messed with his vocal chords, meaning that at best he sounds like a chain smoker and at worst, his voice drops away completely at irregular intervals. It also seems harder to breathe, but maybe he's just imagining that. He could have someone check it to be sure, but the only person he trusts to do that isn't talking to him anymore. He doesn't know why exactly, but Peter seems to have accepted Tony's isolation worryingly easily.

In between missions, he barely speaks at all. He communicates with JARVIS mostly though written and touch-based commands and designs a microphone that makes his voice sound almost normal over the comm system and even sort of mutes it to his own ears.

Peter and him walk into each other at night when they're both getting comfort food and Tony kisses him because he never learned any other way of saying complicated things, even if it's sloppy and doesn't always work. It's better than talking and it's better than nothing and Peter smiles at him a little, so it's okay.

Natasha walks in three seconds after Pete leaves, meaning that she knows what they did and isn't even trying to pretend she doesn't. She takes his hand and tells him the lab can wait and he falls asleep on the couch with her hands in his hair.

When he packs two days later, nothing but bare essentials, he thinks he might be going to miss her most. He's probably gotten to the point where he likes all of them equally and will miss all of the others as much as he misses her, but he likes to pretend he isn't that far gone yet. 

He moves to the Malibu Mansion quietly. The team will only realize later, when they are having dinner and Steve asks JARVIS to make sure Tony knows he's welcome to join them.

He spends two hours crying without knowing why or how to stop it. He sleeps for twelve hours straight and makes up for wasting time by burying himself in work for the next forty hours. JARVIS tells him that Steve wants him to know that they all miss him and want to help him. Half a day later Natasha leaves a surprisingly gentle voicemail asking him if she should fly in, or if there's anyone else he wants to talk to.

He ignores her, but later when he's sitting against the cold lab wall with a bunch of useless robot parts in his hands he asks JARVIS to call her, even though he's crying like a child and he just told Dummy to take himself apart and Dummy did and now it's like everything is broken and he has no idea where to even begin and -

'Tony,' Natasha says, almost forceful in the way her voice immediately demands his attention, coming from all around him. 'I'm coming over. I can't make you feel okay, but... we can watch a movie or something. I'll even make dinner if you haven't had any yet. There's this - were it tortillas? - that I made with Steve, you liked those didn't you?'

'Yeah,' he's still sobbing, but he knows JARVIS is insightful enough to use the voice feature for the comm systems on the phone, too, and he's hoping it will also cover up the sadness. 'Yeah, I bet you miss me like hell.'

'We all miss you,' she says. 'I'll be there in three hours, if I can borrow your jet.'

'It's in the basement.'

'Do you want me to stay on the phone?'

'No, I have to get cleaned up if you're coming.'

He showers first, because all in all that's the easiest mess to deal with. He knows not to look down at his own body too much while naked, knows to wash himself fast and without touching any of the scars. The mirrors he has already covered up the first day he got here, but he knows how to shave without them.

He puts all of Dummy's parts in a box, labels it and shoves it away like it's not important. The rest of the lab he leaves as it is, surprisingly clean because of the lack of take-out containers, bottles and Iron Man parts. The rest of the house is even more untouched. He used the bedroom once and there are some empty glasses and mugs in the kitchen sink, but he's thrown away the wrappings of the little food he has eaten in the past days and he didn't really bring that much with him. There's plenty of clothes in the dresser already and from the things he had in the Tower, there's nothing he wants to keep.

He can't go back to the lab with the box of Dummy-parts, so he sits down on the couch. He turns on the TV, but realises after blankly staring at the woman talking next to a smaller screen with footage that the program is about him. She's speculating about why he hasn't been seen with the Avengers a lot, is the first to leave once a mission is done and doesn't even turn up for a lot of missions until right before they end. He switches to another channel, but he only registers he's watching and action movie when an explosion almost has him scrambling behind the couch. On the next channel there's reruns of some press statement or another Steve did about some thing or another. Tony can't look at him and his kind, sad face, so he moves on to the next channel on which two people are talking about how he may be leaving the Avengers or may be wounded and too proud to admit it or maybe he has cancer or maybe he tried to off himself or maybe he fucked Natasha and now the team is in ruins. He's too tired to be angry about any of it. He knows the truth, that has always been what he was told to keep in mind when the media dragged him through the mud. Now, for the first time he is glad they really don't know, and never will.

He wakes up to JARVIS telling him Nat is at the door. Only when he tries to tell JARVIS to let her in and nothing comes out of his mouth does he realise that he will have to talk to her without the protection of JARVIS's software. He finds the nearest keypad and types in the command, then tries to make himself look less like he just slept for the first time in at least twenty hours.

Natasha doesn't say anything when she enters the living room and sees him. She simply sits down beside him on the couch and takes his hand.

He puts his other hand over the one with which she's holding his, wondering how he'll ever survive without anyone around if he's already missing touch now.

'I've been taught how to make people feel worse,' she says, slowly. 'But I don't know how to make you feel better. I'm so sorry.'

'I'm already feeling better,' he says, his voice a quiet rasp. 'A little.'

She smiles at him, but he can barely look at her long enough to see. He's never noticed before now what the tile looks like in the mansion. He's pretty sure it's something his mother picked out long ago, something Pepper has restored whenever necessary with the greatest care and budget.

'Do you like to cuddle?', he asks, because one of them needs to be vulnerable for this to go anywhere and he already is, anyway. 'I wouldn't peg you as a cuddler, but you've held me before.'

She shrugs. 'I thought everyone likes to cuddle.' She lies down on the couch and pulls him down with her, her hands immediately finding his hair. She holds him firmly, with a lot more strength than she usually shows and whispers something into his ear in Russian. He learned a bit of Russian back when he was trying to translate some of Anton Vanko's notes, but the only word he understands is 'sleep'.

Before he can close his eyes, though, Nat touches his face to get him to look at her. 'Come back to New York with me in a few days,' she says softly. He knows this isn't the Natasha he's lived with the past couple of months, the Natasha that sides with Peter on the Star Trek/Star Wars debate but has more through arguments and knows how to make hundreds of dishes, but usually sticks to popcorn. This is the Natasha that reminds him of Natalie Rushmore, the one that gets things done by sweetening her voice and never was much more than a facade. 'You don't have to stay in the Tower if you don't want to.' Some of the Natasha he knows - he doesn't dare say the real Natasha, knows that she might not even be sure herself - shines through when she continues. 'But there can't be three hours between you and us. There can't be three hours for something bad to become irreversible.'

He imagines them grieving him, Natasha with her eyes cast down, Steve not knowing how to let the tears fall, Peter all quiet and thrown off, Thor crying openly, Clint grim and serious. He isn't foolish enough to think they wouldn't care if he dies now, even if he himself would only be glad. 'Yes,' he says.

'I have a safe house in Brooklyn, just outside Queens.'

'Yes,' he says again and he falls asleep with his hands gripping her shirt.

-

He has never lived in a house as small as the safe house. There's four rooms and one of them is a broom closet with weapons right there with the vacuum cleaner. He puts all of them in a garbage bag and stores the bullets away at the bottom of a box in the corner.

The living room is tiny, but there's a microwave in the part of it that's also a kitchen, so at least he won't starve. The couch is small and uncomfortable and only now he understands having to sleep on the couch isn't just bad in a symbolic sense. He takes a nap and wakes up with his back aching like he's eighty-seven. In the bathroom he can bump his knee against the shower while taking a shit and has to turn his back at an impossible angle to reach the toilet paper. He brought stuff from the Malibu lab, so that at least he won't go crazy from boredom, but there's no space to put it except for on the top of the dresser and the bed, so he figures he'll just have to sleep a little less than he does already.

Steve comes by on a Sunday morning. Tony doesn't know what to do with his hands and his eyes, so he makes coffee while Steve talks from his place on the couch. He's his usual reasonable self, taking his time to explain to Tony that it's better for him if he leaves the team, or at least drops his role of 'finishing the mission', as Steve puts it.

'Not gonna happen,' Tony says. His voice is rough but audible.

'Tony,' Steve says, almost pleading. They still care. It breaks Tony's heart.

Tony turns, though he looks past Steve instead of into his eyes. 'I've gone this far, there's no use in stopping now.' Steve wants to say something, but Tony keeps going. 'The difference between twelve scars and twenty isn't that big. The difference between twenty and fifty, fifty and a hundred. I might as well keep doing it, if it will feel the same either way.'

'It won't. It will get worse,' Steve says and he looks so fucking young. Tony wants to lash out, wants to say _you don’t know shit, you slept through all the bad parts_.

Tony turns back to the counter to pick up Steve's mug of coffee and give it to him. Steve thanks him quietly and Tony says, 'I can take it,' voice steady. The truth is he can't even take this, so however worse it will get, he knows he won't be able to take that, either, but he knows that he will survive.

'Okay. So what are we telling the public? There's a lot of rumours about you right now. Do we address them? Do we make up a story or tell the truth?'

Tony remembers he used to able to stand in the middle of a room with a mug of coffee in his hands without feeling uncomfortable, but he can't remember for the life of him how he did it. 'You can address them if you want. Say whatever, I don't care.'

'Tony,' Steve says again, but Tony has no idea what he means by it.

'Just make sure no one finds out I live here.'

Steve nods. 'Okay.' There's a silence, but Tony can tell there's something else Steve wants to say. He very precisely pushes his fingertips together before he goes on. 'When's the last time you talked to Peter?'

Tony is very aware of his body, of his skin and the way it doesn't quite feel like his own anymore. 'I'm not sure,' he admits.

'He misses you,' Steve says. 'We all do.'

'I know,' Tony says.

'Is it okay if we come by sometimes, not all of us at once of course, but to keep you company?'

'Peter won't come.'

Steve is silent. Then he says, 'Not at first.' 

There's something so terrible about hope and the way Tony doesn't feel it anymore.

-

Three days later he watches Steve tell the world that it's very kind everyone is so concerned about Tony, but none of the rumours are true. Tony is going through a rough patch personally and will therefore be making less individual appearances as Iron Man, but he's definitely staying on the team and he has our full support and I'll be taking questions now thank you.

Tony turns off the TV, cutting off the first question and picks up a jacket he draped over the couch days ago, when he last left the house. He gets his keys and gets out. It’s such a quiet place he lives in, now, useless and suffocating without JARVIS.

In the street he's invisible, especially in the evening, when everyone is huddled together tightly, sharing a bottle or a kiss between them and not at all concerned about the rest of the world. He's just a lonely man, here, who doesn't belong even in New York. The city he grew up in, but only gets to know now that he's looking at the ground.

He goes to bars on these kinds of evenings, when he can't breathe in the tiny apartment and can't breathe outside of it, with all that empty space around him.

The smell of alcohol is strange to him at first, tied to so many memories that even he thinks it's pathetic, but then it becomes a soothing kind of torture. He wants to drink so badly, but a steady thing inside of him knows he won't do it and so he ends up spending a lot of his evenings in the yellow quietness of being surrounded by happy people and warm lights, feeling, he convinces himself, safe.

During the day he sleeps, or talks to whatever Avengers is on Stark-duty (it's never Peter). The stuff he brought from the lab goes untouched for days, and whenever he tries to pick it up, he feels empty like there's nothing left in him still able to create, so he stuffs it all in the broom closet and doesn’t think of it again.

-

Steve doesn't address him directly during missions until after the monster of the day is dead. He doesn't notice but Tony does. Natasha is always the one who tells him where the monster is and what to look out for as he approaches it. Thor is the one who touches his shoulder before the suit assembles around Tony and he's left alone with one of the more boring AIs he's made, one not advanced enough to try to talking him out of what he's going to do to himself.

Missions used to be cheerful, once, a teambuilding exercise that allowed everyone to blow off some steam, but now there's only the quiet. No one jokes around anymore, no one laughs or banters back and forth. The team stands back solemnly as Tony takes off, as if to give him privacy. He shuts off the comms.

The monster looks human, but it's too tall, too muscled and it’s green like aliens in bad sci-fi movies. It's sitting on a concrete support beam looking at birds fighting over pieces of bread like it's in a fucking park. And it has a mop of dark brown hair and brown eyes and a frown like a stubborn kid's. Tony thinks strangely of children and how he never wanted any but still feels sad that that's a possibility completely wiped off the horizon, now. 

'Hey,' Tony says and the monster looks up. 'I'm not going to hurt you I swear.'

The monster looks back at the birds, disinterested. 'You can't,' it says. ‘You’re puny.’

Tony doesn't know what to say to that, even if there wasn't a chunk of panic stuck in his throat. He could hurt this monster. He's going to. 'Can you run?', he asks first. 'Far away so that no one gets hurt anymore?'

'Banner tries,' the monster says. 'But he comes back.'

'Who's Banner?'

The monster shakes his head like he's disappointed, but ignores Tony except for that.

Tony sits down beside him on the beam. 'Why did you... get angry?'

'People hurt Banner. Banner is too weak to smash people.' He imagines this monster crouching over a human protectively. It’s oddly endearing, oddly humanising.

'So you protect him?'

'Hulk protects himself.'

'Is that your name? Hulk?'

The monster nods.

'Hulk, can you run away?'

'Banner is too weak,' he repeats. ‘He comes back.’

'Can you go without him?'

'No.' Again he imagines a human beside this giant, if not a friend at least an ally.

'Can you stop destroying things?'

Hulk breathes in deeply and then lets out his breath almost like a sigh. 'Hulk smash,' he says.

'You aren't smashing anything now.'

'Everything is smashed,’ he says it like Tony should have noticed, but Tony is too used to the sight of broken things.

'You have to kill yourself, Hulk, to stop doing this.'

Tony is prepared for the blow, even if he isn't ready, but it doesn't come.

Hulk only shakes his head. 'Banner tried. Banner is weak. Hulk is strong.'

Tony isn't sure what any of that means, but he's so fucking relieved Hulk doesn't do as he says. 'Tell Banner to hide from everyone who has anything to do with S.H.I.E.L.D. Tell him to stay under the radar. Now go, or they'll lock you up.'

Hulk stands up, grumbling. He leaves a crater in the ground when he jumps, but he's out of anyone's reach in seconds. Tony turns the comms back on, tapping into S.H.I.E.L.D. New York’s intercom system. 'Let him go or the next thing you'll hear over this intercom will be an order to saw yourselves in half.'

He tells the team Hulk can't kill himself, but he'll be okay so long as no one tries to hurt him. They don’t even question it.

Clint comes with him to the apartment and they watch cartoons together for the rest of the day.

-

He meets Bruce in a bar on a Thursday, which is always the worst day of the week.

He's sitting at the bar, nursing a Coke as he tries to ignore the bartender's pitying looks and the Halloween decorations that should have been taken down two days ago. A man comes to sit in the stool beside him, orders himself a drink and doesn't seem to notice Tony at first. Then he turns, very deliberately and asks, 'How long have you been sober?' with this tiny little smile like they’ve been talking for hours already.

'Two months,' Tony says after a pause. It's strange how talking to people never ceases to be terrifying with a voice like his.

'Then we'll drink to that,' the man says, raising his own Coke.

Tony clinks their glasses together. 'How about you?'

'My whole life,' he says. It doesn’t sound like a victory, the way he says it.

Tony nods. He wants to say something about the man having been raised well, but then realises that he himself stopped drinking because of the awful way he'd been raised. 'I'm Max,' he says instead, because it's easier if he pretends there's still something of Tony Stark left in him people would recognise if they had the name to go with the face.

'Bruce,' the man says and there's a silence between them like they've known each other for ages.

'Do you ever wish you had?', Tony asks then.

Bruce somehow knows he's still talking about drinking, because he says, 'When I can't sleep, when I feel too much.'

'It helps,' Tony says. 'But it's not worth it.'

Bruce nods and Tony wishes they were touching.

'I used to fuck around a lot,' he says. 'People used to want me.'

'And now?'

'I try to remember, but it's all fading.'

'Take me home,' Bruce says. 'Remember me.'

Tony leans in and kisses him, softly. It's been so fucking long. It's been so long and he wants this so bad. 'I live a block away,' he says. He leaves money with their half-empty glasses and they walk home quietly, a few inches apart like they aren't aching.

Bruce pushes him against the wall as soon as Tony has locked the door. And then they're kissing with all their broken parts forgotten on the floor. Bruce doesn't try to undress him, just kisses him like it matters. Tony is pinned to the wall, can't think of anything except for how he feels like he hasn't existed this profoundly in a long time, like this is the first time he's been in his body in weeks. Bruce whispers his name, his real name, not the fake one Tony gave him and he can feel himself right to his bones.

Bruce's lips drift to his jaw and he speaks in between kisses, like he can't stop. 'Can you kill him?'

Tony has to catch his breath. They're so close, Bruce's lips on his again. He doesn’t know what this is about, but he knows it can only be bad.

‘Who?’, he asks against Bruce’s lips.

Bruce kisses the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his temple, his ear, his jaw. Tony is dizzy with it. ‘He calls himself Hulk. You met him. I saw it on the news.’

‘Are you Banner?’, Tony asks, panting as Bruce’s lips drift over his clothes. He opens Tony’s jacket, but he doesn’t go any further than that.

‘Yes,’ Bruce whispers and he kisses Tony on the lips again. ‘Can you kill him?’

When he pulls away from Bruce, it almost hurts physically, so he stays close to him. He pulls them towards the couch and sits, their legs touching. Finally, they take off their jackets and almost as an afterthought, Tony also pulls off his scarf. In the darkness of the flat, Bruce won’t see the scar underneath.

Tony looks at the scarf in his hands. ‘He doesn’t listen to me. That’s how… I just tell them to kill themselves and they keep trying until it works, but he didn’t even really consider it.’

Bruce doesn’t say anything.

‘He said you tried to kill him and it didn’t work.’

‘It didn’t,’ Bruce confirms.

‘So how does it work. Do you keep him in a garage or something?’

Bruce smiles, one hand finding Tony’s face like he really can’t stop himself. ‘He lives inside of me. I have cells in me that blow up when I’m in danger, and that’s him.’

There’s a silence.

‘Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to kill him,’ Tony says. ‘He’s special.’

Bruce leans in very slowly, and kisses him like an ice cube melting on the tongue.

Tony feels like he’s breathing for the first time since Pepper left and Bruce pushes until they’re lying down and Tony doesn’t think of anything for ten minutes, but then he realises this is what happens before sex and he can’t have sex ‘cause he’s littered with scars and he hasn’t so much as touched himself since before he moved to Malibu.

He breaks the kiss as carefully as he knows how. ‘Is it okay if we don’t fuck tonight?’, he asks.

Bruce nods. ‘Of course.’

He nuzzles Tony’s neck, then kisses his way back up to Tony’s lips.

-

The next morning, Tony wakes up in his bed, Bruce beside him.

Bruce is already awake, all curled up and smiling at Tony. ‘I don’t know if the same rules apply for cuddling one nightstands,’ he admits. ‘Was I supposed to leave before you woke up?’

Tony shakes his head, then leans in for a sloppy kiss and leaves his eyes closed even as they pull apart. ‘Punch me,’ he orders, knowing the blow will land just as hard even if he is expecting it.

‘What?’, Bruce says.

Tony opens his eyes, hope curling in his chest like smoke. ‘Poke your ear.’

Bruce is frowning, but he doesn’t do it. ‘Why?’

Tony kisses him again. ‘No reason,’ he says but his eyes are wet and pricking.

-

They meet for coffee two days later and go for lunch three days after that. They go to a movie two days later and another two days after that, they have coffee again.

Bruce kisses him sometimes, in the movie theatre and in the restaurant and in a park and in the middle of the sidewalk on the way home. It’s the most peaceful he’s felt in a long time, focused on one thing and nothing else.

The day after going for coffee, it snows for the first time, or at least, that’s what Bruce says when he turns up at Tony’s door in the middle of the day.

Tony looks outside pointedly, the air empty of everything but wind.

‘It melts before it reaches the ground,’ Bruce says. He realises belatedly that he hasn’t properly greeted Tony yet, so he pecks him on the cheek and mumbles ‘hi’.

Tony kisses him on the lips and then takes his hand, pulling his coat from the coat rack as he tells Bruce he has a key to the entrance to the roof.

They spend the rest of the morning there, huddled close together as the snow falls for no one but them.

-

Bruce is at Tony’s place the next day when Thor comes around, so Tony ends up introducing them somewhat awkwardly. Bruce and Thor get along, though, and team up to make dinner out of the admittedly pathetic contents of Tony’s fridge. Before he leaves, Thor asks Tony if the rest of the team can know and Tony is somewhat surprised by the question, but nods.

When Natasha comes by the next day, Bruce is still there, because he slept over and Natasha thinks it’s okay to come by unannounced at ten am.

They have a fight after Natasha leaves, about whether what they have is healthy and okay and safe (Tony insisting that it can’t be if he has to go kill monsters every other month and Bruce insisting he needs someone to help him cope and Bruce insisting he’s not safe to be around the Hulk and Tony insisting that Bruce needs to trust Hulk more or at least has to let Tony trust Hulk) and they end up on the couch together, Bruce nuzzling Tony’s neck. They haven’t fucked yet, but it doesn’t seem that important. It might happen, but it doesn’t really need to for Tony. When Tony asks Bruce about it, he’s surprised. ‘Sex hadn’t really occurred to me,’ he says, breath warming Tony’s neck.

Tony asks Bruce to move in a week and six fights later and they have another fight about that, but it’s okay, because the next day Tony helps Bruce move his stuff and texts a SI lawyer to help Bruce sell his own apartment.

Tony’s apartment isn’t made for two people, but they both need it, to be in someplace small, someplace that surrounds them so snugly. They wake each other up with their nightmares, but it’s better than having to deal with them alone. The fridge fills up steadily and Tony gets used to eating three meals a day again.

Tony wears a short-sleeved T-shirt around the house, and it’s the first time Bruce sees any other scar than the one across Tony’s throat. He’s let his hair grow over the ones on his temples, but he must have felt them along with the one from Blonsky. There’s a thick one on either wrist and his upper arms are all scratched up from an alien wizard that let himself be devoured by his own flying guard dogs when Tony ordered him to die. Bruce kisses him like he does every day, but wraps him up in a hug when he sees Tony is shaking.

-

There’s a battle with a mad scientist and his beetle-like creations a couple of days before Christmas, but Steve tells Tony to sit it out, so he watches it with Bruce on live TV.

Steve comes by afterwards to tell him everything’s alright and Tony asks him a question he’s wanted to ask for a long time.

‘How’s Pete?’

Steve smiles sadly. ‘Okay, but not great. He misses you.’

Tony nods. ‘Tell him I miss him, too. Like hell.’

‘Come to Christmas dinner,’ Steve says, almost pleading.

‘I’ll bring Bruce,’ Tony says.

-

Christmas is the first time he sees the whole team together in a long while. Even during missions they’re all in different places and never near him.

Nat kisses him on the cheek and then kisses Bruce, too, reminding him they’ve been going for coffee regularly the last few weeks.

Peter tells him Merry Christmas when he enters and introduces himself politely to Bruce and Tony wants to hug him so badly, but he doesn’t.

They treat him like he hasn’t been gone at all and pretend they’ve known Bruce for ages. Everyone got them gifts (Bruce and him spent two days finding the right stuff for all of them and then he spent another half a day seeking something for Bruce with Natasha’s help) and Bruce discusses politics with Steve and gamma radiation with Peter and Big Hero 6 with Clint and helps in the kitchen wherever he can and sometimes just sits down beside Tony and presses his lips against his cheek.

Steve convinces them to stay the night and they sleep in Tony’s old bedroom, which is strange and scary and a little comforting. He texts Pepper Merry Christmas and kisses Bruce good morning and tells him he’s going down to his old lab for a bit.

Only when he’s inside the elevator he decides he’ll go to the lab he shared with Peter instead, knowing it’s too early for Pete to be there, so that he can see what Peter’s working on these days without it being awkward.

But when he steps out of the lift, Peter _is_ there, cursing at a computer screen with a mug of coffee in hand. He has new glasses, Tony forgot to mention that yesterday. He seems taller, too, or skinnier, maybe.

‘Hey,’ Tony says, and Pete doesn’t jump which means JARVIS warned him. 

He turns around, smiling weakly at Tony. ‘Good morning,’ he says.

There’s a silence. Tony has no idea what to say.

Peter puts down his mug and takes a step forward. ‘I miss you,’ he says.

‘I know.’

‘Are you back?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I hug you?’

Tony can only nod. Then Peter is there, wrapping around him even when Tony himself can’t move. 

‘Bruce is really cool,’ Peter says.

Tony nods again. ‘Yeah he is. And he’s all mine, kiddo.’

Peter laughs into Tony’s hair and he knows it’s okay, even if it isn’t like it was before.

-

The day before New Year’s eve it’s raining buckets and Tony knows when he wakes up that today they’re going to need him.

The call comes six hours later, when Bruce and him are having a lunch on the couch. He kisses Bruce before he leaves, but can barely even look at him.

He doesn’t put on the suit, but waits for Natasha to pick him up on her new motorcycle and drive him in like that.

It’s this tiny thing with tongues that dart out like a chameleon’s and can tear a building apart in one go. It strangles itself with one tongue and minutes later Tony feels a painful tightening of his own throat and reaches up to feel the new tautness of the skin there.

Peter walks him home after the mission and they talk and talk and hug goodbye.

He lets Bruce help him change out of his soaking clothes and doesn’t stop him when he insists on putting salve on his new, barely visible scar, but only because he doesn’t feel like putting up a fight. Bruce kisses him until he’s feeling whole again and Tony falls asleep in with his head in Bruce’s lap with Wall-E still playing on TV.

-

On New Year’s Eve Bruce and him go back to the Tower and he shows the team the soundproof rooms he designed for the Fourth of July last year, when it was just Peter and him and his PTSD was so bad he couldn’t even stand a thunderstorm, let alone fireworks. Judging from the way Steve smiles at him gratefully and Bruce kisses his cheek and Natasha immediately claims the best spot, he isn’t the only one.

He’s still shaken from yesterday and he knows everyone is disappointed to see him so withdrawn, but he can’t help it. He smiles as he counts down, though, and kisses Bruce until everyone is groaning, then gives all of the others a peck on the cheek because he knows that’s how he gets them to hug him, and he could use a lot of hugs.

-

Six days later on a Sunday morning, Bruce and him are lying in bed together and Bruce asks, ‘Are you okay?’

And Tony says, ‘I better than I used to be.’ And that’s all that needs to be true for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from You Are Jeff by Richard Siken
> 
> Also it'd be cool if you sent me prompts at sleeplesslyembracing.tumblr.com!


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